Merealitikan Kebebasan Sebenar

Aktiviti Terdekat

ISLAMIC MEDICINE COLLOQUIUM

organized by: Himpunan Keilmuan Muda (HAKIM)

Islamic Medicine, at core, is like what can be called an Integrative Medical Conceptual Framework (IMCF), or an Integrative Medical Principle (IMP), allowing it to systemically identify, appropriate and incorporate into its own medical theory and clinical practice, what is proven to be experientially and empirically good in all medical systems, modern or ancient, without compromising its own vision of what it means to be human and to be healthy. This Colloquium will try to flesh out this conceptualization in further detail in a way that people in the medical profession can find to be conceptually and empirically generative and fruitful.

The revival of Islamic Medicine in the present context can provide a conceptually rich and yet practical medical alternative to modern medicine, a parallel medical pardigm that engages and interacts with the modern system and yet remain autonomous, with a great potential to critically and proactively identify, appropriate and integrate positive aspects of the modern system into its holistic vision and practice.

Medical research is not only medical, empirical or clinical, but also philosophical, historical and cross-cultural (e.g., as in ethnomedicine), for there is so much of time-tested traditional medical methods, remedies and ideas that have been lost to our collective intellectual and cultural memory due to systemic, reductionist medical westernization, and hence, for the Islamic Medicine Research Program (IMRP) to move forward, historical and cross-cultural research is also important. This does not mean that all doctors and medical academics and professionls have to do the actual ardous research, but that all of them should be aware of such research as has been done, know how to access it and render it accessible to other practitioners and to their students and patients, and the lay public in general.

Islamic Medicine is basically Natural or Fitrah Medicine (al-Tibb al-Fitri) centred on a sophisticated philosophical, spiritual and empirical psychology of the self-body dual nature of the human being, in which the body serves the self, while drawing its medical content critically from the ancient medical traditions of diverse cultures, Greek, Egyptian, Indian, Persian, Arabian and Chinese, as well as adding on these accumulated medical wisdom from the medical traditions of the Prophet himself (al-Tibb al-Nawawi), sallallahu ‘alayhi wasallam, all within an overarching integrative conceptual framework. As Dr. Rehan Zaidi of Sunnipath Academy puts it:

“One commonality between the Eastern medical traditions and Prophetic medicine is their concept of holism, a view documented well over 1,000 years ago explaining the value of the mind-body-spirit connection—discussions modern science seriously begun to explore only in the past 20 years. Taking Chinese medicine as an example, other shared practices also demonstrate the similarities. Both these systems place emphasis on procedures such as cupping, herbal therapy, and dietary modification, with fundamental reliance on prevention, balance, and non-physical forces such as energy and prayer.”

The colloquium draws on this time-tested, cosmopolitan heritage and invites the relevant parties to revive it in the context of a contemporary conceptual and empirical Islamic Medicine Research Program (IMRP), one major component of which is a systemic evidence-based reinvestigation of the clinical practices, remedies and therapies documented in the classical Islamic medical texts, including Tibb Nabawi texts, and another of which is a systemic critical survey of contemporary medical approaches from East & West, including indigenous ethnomedical oral traditions, which are in accord for the most part with Islamic medical philosophy and axiology, e.g., naturopathy, homeopathy, kampo, acupuncture, food therapy, sleep therapy, indigenous ethnomedical traditions, etc., even aspects of modern western secular allopathic and technological approaches that can be critically integrated into the Islamic Medical framework.